‘A tale of decay’: the Houses of Parliament are falling down

2 months, 1 day ago

The long read: As politicians dither over repairs, the risk of fire, inundation or a spate of sewage merely increases. But fixing the Palace of Westminster might change British politics for good which is the last thing many of its residents want

Britain’s Parliament is broken. It is a flame danger. It is insanitary. Asbestos worms its route through the building. Many of the tubes and cables that carry heat, water, energy and gas were installed just after the war and should have been replaced in the 1970 s; some of them date from the 19 th century. The older the steam pipe become, the more likely they are to cracking or leak. When high-temperature, high-pressure steam enters the ambiance, it expands at velocity, generating huge, explosive energy. Such force could be fatal for anyone close; it could also disturb asbestos and send it flying through the ventilation system, to be inhaled by palace employees. The house caught fire 40 times between 2008 and 2012. Last year, a malfunctioning light on an obscure part of the roof caused an electrical fire that could have spread rapidly, had it not been detected at once. Whatever else happens in the Palace of Westminster, that great neo-Gothic pile on the Thames, one thing is constant. Every hour of every day, four or five members of the fire-safety squad are patrolling the palace, hunting for flames.

Away from the grand chambers of the House of Commons and House of Lords, away from the lofty passageways, away from the imposing committee rooms with their carved doorways, the palace is tatty, dirty and infested with vermin. Its lavatories stink, its drains leak. Some of the external stonework has not been cleaned since it was built in the 1840 s, and is encrusted with a thick coat of tarry black that is eating away at the masonry. Inside the building, intricate fan vaulting is flaking off, was affected by oozing rainwater and leaking pipes. Its Gothic-revival artworks are decaying: in the Lords chamber, the once-golden statues of the barons who signed the Magna Carta are now dull gray, pitted and corroded.

Beyond its country of disrepair, the building is all too obviously a remnant of a predemocratic age. It was constructed not to welcome its populace in, but to impress them with its fortress-like grandeur. It was designed when women were, at best, crinoline-wearing spectators of parliamentary life, consigned to the public gallery. With its chilly colonnades of sculptures of male politicians, its heavy, ecclesiastical furnishings and gentlemen’s-club atmosphere, it provides the perfect stage-set for Britain’s” very aggressive, very masculine, very power-hoarding republic”, as political scientist Matthew Flinders put it.

Leigh is right that the palace is more than a only a build. It is the place- grand and tawdry, magnificent and squalid- that symbolises everything, both good and bad, about Britain and its democracy. Now it is dilapidated, ramshackle and dangerous. And no one seems willing, or able, to fix it.

” If you look back over day, there has been no famine of people saying that something should be done ,” said crossbench peer Lord Lisvane who, in his previous guise as Sir Robert Rogers, clerk of the Commons , commissioned a report into the state of the palace in 2012.” And then you look at the excuses for not doing anything: too expensive, too embarrassing, too soon after the war- which gives you a very vivid impression of how long this has been going on .”( The administration of the parliamentary estate, which includes a number of satellite buildings, is overseen by commissions of the Lords and Commons, akin to boards of directors, although the ruler still officially retains control over portions of the palace. There is no single chief executive figure, and a complex tangle of departments are dealing here with the buildings’ upkeep .)

Screeds of farther analyzes, papers and parliamentary inquiries have warned, bleakly, of a” loom crisis”, of a” narrative of disintegration, disrepair and dilapidation “. The Cassandras who have authored these reports( most recently a joint committee of both Houses of Parliament) warn of constant danger of flood, of the” ever-present threat” presented by asbestos, and, most urgently,” a risk of a major conflagration “. With a hint of desperation, the committee, in its findings of 2016, compared the difficulty of trying to keep the palace safe, despite continual” aggressive maintenance” to” trying to fill a bathtub with a thimble while the water is draining out of the plughole at the other aim “.

What is needed, the report argues, is a thoroughgoing renovation programme, preferably undertaken over about six years in an empty palace. The body that actually gets to decide on how to proceed is parliament itself, and in January, MPs will debate whether to set up a delivery authority- an arm’s-length body akin to the organisation that ran the London Olympics– to oversee the works. It will be the first time the question of the palace renovations has come before parliament.

The problem is that MPs are caught in a trap. The renovations, it was estimated in June 2015, will cost a minimum of PS3. 5bn.( If parliamentarians choose to stay in the building, the work could take 40 years and cost PS5. 7bn .) Spending vast amounts of fund on their own workplace feelings, to many, politically impossible. Some of them fear that moving out of the Palace of Westminster could indelibly alter parliament’s culture. Flinders said:” There are those who realise that if they permit new intakes of MPs to go into a new chamber, with new ambiances, further ways of doing things, places for everyone to sit, new procedures, new ways of talking, they may refuse to go back into what may to them feel like an antique store .”

The temptation for parliamentarians is to stall. But doing nothing is also a choice. Every year of delay increases the cost of the works by an estimated PS100m. Every day that passes makes a catastrophe more likely. Tom Healey, head of restoration and renewal at the palace, told him that the palace’s mechanical and engineering services- all those tubes and ducts and cables- are classified according to likelihood of failure.” By 2020, 40% of them will be at critical or high risk. By 2025, the above figures will be 52%. By 2025, most of the building services in the palace will be at a very high risk of failing. It’s a bit like driving a automobile with 40 -year-old brakes: you can’t say when they’ll fail. But health risks is pretty high .” As hour grinds on- the projected date of the start of works has already slipped from 2020 to the mid-2 020 s- so grows the risk of” either a single, catastrophic event, or a succession of incremental failings in essential systems, which would lead to Parliament no longer being able to sit in the palace”, as the 2016 report set it. And if that happens, said Healey,” we have a very big problem “.

So many people are in denial about the state of the Houses of Parliament because the peril is largely invisible- both to the public and to most of its 8,000 or so workers. Most guests watch merely its grandeur- enchanting still, despite the scaffolding that encompasses so much of the building while mends are made to the roof and to the Elizabeth Tower, home of the great buzzer, Big Ben. The first thing most visitors encounter is the vast, echoing space of the medieval Westminster Hall, whose great timber ceiling is carven with 26 rising angels. Then, passing beneath a new stained-glass window commemorating women’s suffrage, one of the few markers of a female presence in the palace, you enter St Stephen’s Hall. You are now in the 19 th-century portion of the building: Charles Barry’s masterpiece of planning, each space flowing gracefully to the next, hectically embellished with Augustus Pugin’s neo-gothic detailing, from the gilded wallpaper to the ornate floor tiles. From here you reach the vaulted Central Lobby, from which radiate passageways leading to all the palace’s 1,100 rooms, seven floors, 100 staircases, and 31 lifts- merely one of which is fully wheelchair-compliant.( When I visited, it was out of use .)

It is two floors down, however, in the out-of-bounds expanses of the cellar- the principal home of the palace’s outmoded cables and ducts- that lurks the most likely source of disaster. Depending on the tides, you might now be beneath the level of the Thames. It is crepuscular; it is stultifyingly hot. The smell of fat is intense as kitchen waste works its style towards the drainages. A layer of dust and grime coats the floor.

A labyrinth of passages runs the 300 m length of the building, each so thickly lined with ducts and wires that they have become narrow and low. When I visited a few weeks ago, Andrew Piper, the head of design for restoration and renewal, operated his hands across a jumble of cables and tubes, naming each in turn:” That’s data, that’s the fire alarm, that’s security systems, that’s optics for broadcasting, that’s heating, that’s cooling, that’s steam, that’s water. We are particularly keen to get rid of the old steam pipe ,” he said.” If you have a steam leak, there can be real damage caused to people. High-pressure steam can cut through bone .”

Something sticky dripped on to my hand.” This is grease and fat from the kitchens. It seems to be leaking on to electrical pipework ,” Piper said. The Victorian palace was not designed, he added, to accommodate the sheer amount of water, kitchen waste and sewage that now flows through its drains. Down a gloomy corridor and a further series of damp steps, announced by a different kind of odour, are two vast, cast-iron vessels- the palace sewage ejectors, in which the effluent being developed by parliamentarians and staff gathers before it is pushed into the city drainages. They were installed in 1888.” One of them could easily crack ,” said Piper.” We get sewage leaks throughout the palace .” Lord Lisvane told me that one of the palace’s disaster-planning exercisings, undertaken when he was clerk of the Commons, had imagined a failure of the sewage system.” In that scenario, we had 36 hours before we had to evacuate the building. Aside from all the rather unpleasant stuff about the rising high levels of sewage, the fact is that when it hits the high-tension electricity cables, the electricity is out, you don’t have any fresh water, and you are done for .”

All big builds have their grubby, behind-the-scenes engine rooms. What builds this one exceptional, said Piper, is the sheer, bewildering intricacy of it all. There is, he said, never enough time to remove defunct systems, since parliamentary recesses are too short for major works, and the chambers have to be ready for occupation at 48 hours’ notification, in case parliament is suddenly recollected( as it has been 29 hours since 1948 ). That means the ducts and cables simply pile up, one on top of the other.” The number-one fire danger is all these ageing electrical services, issues with leaks, wet pipework running over old electrical systems ,” he said. The virtually inaccessible labyrinth of Victorian shafts, through which these services pass, could, he said, offer routes for a conflagration to move quickly and unpredictably; “were not receiving” proper system of flame compartmentalisation.” That is my biggest fear ,” he said.” That’s how you could lose a big proportion of the building .”

The Palace of Westminster is not just a citadel (” the citadel of British autonomy”, said Churchill ), it is a country unto itself. It operates by its own decide of recondite laws, rituals and conventions. Once you are inside, beyond the security cordon, nearly all human needs are met. There is a post office. There is a hairdresser( a Newsnight-ready blow-dry costs PS30 ). There is a nursery, which opened in 2010. There is a gym( with sunbed ). At the foot of the stairs to the Strangers’ Gallery( or public gallery) in the House of Lords hangs a written notice- now encompassed, though you can find it if you know how- pointing the way to the old rifle range, where special branch officers offered shooting lessons to parliamentarians as recently as 2015.

Travelling around this strange land is a fraught business. One is constantly committing mysterious, minor infractions. It is like is available on a country where the language is comprehensible, but the codes of behaviour are opaque. From the Central Lobby, for example, four corridors radiate. There is no sign to tell you that you cannot take the one that leads to the House of Commons: but if you accidentally stray there, you are able to get an imperious ticking-off from one of the Palace doorkeepers( 59 are employed by the Commons, and 23 by the Lords ). There have been doorkeepers here since the 14 th century: garmented in white tie, they control the movements of others with punctilious energy. I was reprimanded for loitering” on the blue carpet” in the Prince’s Chamber, and for spoke of the Royal Robing Room, which is sometimes let and sometimes not. Doorkeepers are also sources of gossip, humor and speculative histories of the palace. One I fulfilled indicated disapprovingly that “Comrade Corbyn” would soon be selling off Pugin’s wildly over-the-top royal throne in the House of Lords” if he has his style “. Another told him that lions illustrated on the floor of a certain passageway” have their eyes shut so they can’t look up the ladies’ skirts “. Floors, as it happens, are important: green carpets mean you are in the part of the building owned by the Commons; red carpets entail the Lords.

The House of Commons chamber, where politicians glare at each other across an aisle like hostile choristers, looks the way it does through historical collision. In the 16 th century, Edward VI offered the deconsecrated St Stephen’s chapel, with its facing ranks of seat, to parliament as its permanent home; it has hitherto sat in the chapter house of Westminster Abbey. The basic layout of the chamber has followed exactly the same design since. Today it is in a terrible nation. Leaving aside the problem that it has too few seats( 427 for 650 MPs) and space for only one wheelchair, there is the fact that the concrete substructure on which it sits has asbestos-lined air ducts operating through it. The only way to remove it safely, said head of restoration and renewal Tom Healey, is to break it out of the cement in which it is embedded.” We’d have to dismantle the chamber panel by panel ,” he said. He is also worried about the electrical cables, installed after the blitz.” A lot of them here still have vulcanised india rubber insulation. That eventually turns to dust inside the wall- then you have dust around your cables, and that is obviously a fire hazard .”

It is in this chamber that MPs will argue about how to renovate the palace. The debate is much delayed: it was supposed to happen in late 2016, then December 2017, and now it has slipped again to January 2018. In fact , no opportunity for procrastination has been expended during the course of its entire process. The publication of the 2016 report was itself delayed, at the request of the government: first because of the EU referendum, then because of the UK’s abrupt change of “ministers “. Yet more delay will be built in by the government’s motion. MPs will not be asked simply to endorse a” full decant” of the palace, as the report recommended.( Such a move would involve constructing temporary chambers nearby: Richmond House, the present Department of Health building, was proposed by the joint committee for the Commons; the QE2 conference centre for the Lords .) Instead, the motion will empower a delivery committee to mull over the options once again- whether to choose the” full decant”, whether the Lords and Commons should depart in turn, or whether parliament should retain a “foothold” in Westminster Hall for ceremonial occasions. According to Bryant, this latest explosion of stalling is” risky, and it’s adding millions to the final bill “.

But this is Westminster. This is the world not of reason, but of politics, with all the hedging, compromises, self-interest, short-termism and sheer pig-headedness that that implies. According to Lady Stowell, the former leader of the House of Lords who co-chaired the joint committee, and prefers getting on with the works with a full decant, there is a nervousness among some of her colleagues” that, as legislators, “weve already” detested, and so what sensible legislator would agree to expend millions of pounds on our building ?”

Because of the postpones, and because “ministers ” Theresa May’s minority government is so weak, opposition to leaving the building has gained momentum. A group of Conservative backbenchers, including Sir Edward Leigh and Shailesh Vara, are contemplating an amendment to the government motion. They object to the building of a “folly” of a replica chamber at great expense; they deprecate the views of the “experts” and “officials” who have recommended moving out. They argue that, with what Vara calls a” can-do stance”, the run could be done with parliament in situ, largely through triple-shift working during parliamentary recess.

The language they use is precisely that of the committed Brexiteer: if only their scheme is gone at with sufficient verve then everything will be fine; the problem is nothing like as complex as it seems; the experts are pulling the woolen over everyone’s eyes. In short, they are in refusal.” If parliament really really wants to stay ,” said Tom Healey,” we will devise a route of doing it, but it’s important for parliament to understand what that entails: several decades of really serious interruption, lifts being to turn, catering facilities closing, the chambers closed for two to four years .”

Stowell and Bryant guess the project could be turned to the good: as a major infrastructural project, it will create jobs, and could be used as a boost for apprenticeships in the many trades and crafts that will be needed to nurse this Victorian masterpiece back to health. It could even, said Stowell, become a positive statement of intent in a post-Brexit Britain, when what some regard as a newly sovereign British parliament establishes itself.” We parliamentarians could use it as a route of reevaluating our relationship with the people ,” she said.

Underlying the postpones and the stalling and the being-in-denial, it is possible to see a more fundamental nervousnes among parliamentarians than the fear of frittering away taxpayers’ money. It is the fear of an old order passing away. It is the the dreaded of a separation from a bizarre, rationally indefensible, yet alluring theater of politics that seems so inextricably linked to British identity and history. It is a anxiety of bringing in new structures and spaces and behaviours- ones less likely to prop up the white male upper-clas who predominate parliament.” I think there is an agenda with restoration and renewal ,” said Leigh.” In kicking us out, the whole thing will change. Inevitably it will change. If you are out for years, institutional memory will die very quickly .”

Some would welcome that. There are parliamentary rituals that would look distinctly odd in a new or temporary building. For example, the speaker’s daily procession through the palace before opening parliamentary proceedings, accompanied by the chaplain, the trainbearer, the secretary, the serjeant-at-arms and shouts of” Hats off, strangers !” Or the tradition of MPs physically dragging a newly appointed speaker to the speaker’s chair. Or the doorkeepers’ sob of” Who goes home ?” as the house rises. Or the boxes of snuff placed outside the chambers. Or the placing of a prayer card on a Commons’ seat to reserve a place, like a towel on a sunlounger. Or the pink ribbons hanging from coat hangers in the peers’ cloakroom, from which to suspend one’s imaginary sword.

As for the Lords,” If we do decant, we will lose some of the elders of the tribe ,” predicted historian Lord Hennessy. In a gerontocratic house that the late Lord Peston once said ran on” rumor and the exchange of medical symptoms”, some will resign from the Lord before suffering the upheaval of a move; nor will they wish to swap their panelled rooms and deep leather armchairs for a conference centre.” The peculiar combination of people in here will be remixed. The average age will drop ,” said Hennessy.( It is currently 69.) Flinders said:” Some in the Lords are worried that they are going to come back and find the locks have been changed “.